Cardiff, Castle and Crêpes

Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. I blame the alliterative blog titles, they’re clearly just too challenging for me to come up with on a regular basis.

One possible reason for this could be that my level of English is deteriorating every single day. ‘Does this sound natural in English?’ is a question which I’m asked all of the time at work and, although I take my best guess, it’s getting harder every time I'm in. I know that when you stop speaking a foreign language it becomes more difficult (Hi there, 3 remaining words from GCSE Spanish) but I’d never have thought that it could happen to your mother tongue so quickly and so easily. Even worse, my English is deteriorating MUCH quicker than my French is improving – they’re completely out of sync. I therefore find myself speaking two languages atrociously without a smidgen of grammar in either – not fun!

Railways, Rouen and Raclette

On Wednesday, I and three of the other English assistants went for another wander around town stopping by the enormous fair which is here until the end of the month and ending up at the Coty shopping centre. The fair had Kinder crêpes for 3€ – pretty ­­­­­­­cheap for a taste revolution! Kinder chocolate seems to be really popular in France, especially amongst my students, and I’ve gotten a little bit addicted. Although it makes me feel like a 5 year old, it’s a lot nicer than Milka which I really don’t like that much!

After this we went to the Monoprix in Coty and discovered that they sell PRINGLES and Tyrells’ popcorn (Sweet and salted in the same bag, existing in harmony. Cinemas, take note). Such a good day for food!

Argent, Articles and Arrivals

Today has been an almighty win of a day, my favourite for quite a while.

My Erasmus cheque arrived at my house meaning that I’m now substantially richer than I was, my parcel from home containing some books that I needed for my dissertation arrived in my pigeonhole at school along with my new photocopy code from the school and (most excitingly for me) the National Theatre Book Shop put my article on understudies published in SUSU’s The Edge entertainment magazine in their daily news update alongside articles from The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph and The Stage. This is the biggest share I’ve ever had and, even better, I didn’t solicit it at all. Wherever they found the piece, I’m very glad they did – it made my day.

Puddles, Phones and Planning

What goes up must come down. I woke up this morning with a headache (champagne does that to me sometimes but I don’t have enough chances to drink it to remember!) and just as I wanted to go out the heavens opened. Not ideal as I’ve already been the crazy English guy soaked to the skin wearing only a t-shirt this week…

I decided to wait out the rain but this came at the price of meeting someone who insulted my French. I wasn’t too chuffed about this and even if I do speak French like a Spanish cow (French idiom there for you, courtesy of my friend Sam) I don’t need to be told – I’d never tell anyone I thought their English was crap, mainly because that’d be bloody rude! As I’ve said in other blog entries, it’s incredibly difficult for me to gauge how good my French is because the range of responses has been so varied. Today didn’t clarify anything. Meh.

Clubs, Churches and Casinos

Today was pretty hectic but awesome. I packed loads of stuff it but had really good fun doing it and the possibility of a trip to Angers in the near future made it even more exciting.

In the morning, I went to Coty to use the internet. I think that the security guards may think I’ve set up office in their shopping centre and, to an extent, they’re right. Having sent my dissertation proposal to my new supervisor for it to be rechecked, I then headed back in the Caucriauville direction to go to the bakery, Le Fournil de Montgeon. I’m now known in the bakery as the guy that orders pizza so I’m glad it was Le Club Sandwich day as this gave me the opportunity to order something different and avoid being typecast. Sandwich in hand, I headed up the hill to the lycée arriving just in time for the start of the club.